According to March 13 news from SAWS’s website, the death toll resulting from a catastrophic road accident that took place in China’s Shanxi Province on March 1 has risen to 31 while 9 others remain missing.
The accident happened inside the Yanhou Tunnel which links Jincheng City of Shanxi Province and Jiyuan City of Henan Province. Two tankers crashed resulting in a large methanol leak. Inadequate cleanup measures implemented by the tanker’s driver failed to deal with the tanker spill which subsequently ignited and exploded, engulfing 42 nearby vehicles some of which carried flammable substances.
Local government organized a rescue team, and investigators from the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and Ministry of Transport (MOT) were immediately sent to the site. Many of the vehicles were burnt beyond recognition to such an extent that various approaches including DNA identification had to be adopted to identify the deceased.
The central government has been paying close attention to this accident and urging the public to learn from this terrible tragedy. Some major issues which are usually overlooked have been brought to light as a result of the accident include:
The ubiquity of unprofessional and untrained staff involved in the transport of hazardous chemicals;
Transport enterprise using bad internal management practices
Supervisory loopholes and weak regulatory enforcement by relevant authorities.
In recent years, many serious incidents have occurred during road transport of methanol. According to statistics, in 2012 China’s annual freight of methanol for domestic trade amounted to more than 6 million tons, most of which travelled from Western China and the inland regions to the north and the east.
